This is the kind of job that every Eisenhower era, buzz cut, button down asshole will flex his jaw muscles and say, "It teaches responsibility." or some such bullshit that the government propagandized in 1957 to implement their totally withering attack on the sovereignty of Americans, to accompany their mindless industrialized build up to the Vietnam War. A populace who didn't question authority was required for the new world order to take control and television provided the means for mass hypnotism. Consumption required mindless robot jobs like the one at the warehouse and while most people will arrogantly and smugly notify me, like I am a complete asshole, that jobs like that are good because they teach me to work hard to improve my life and become a child psychologist or event planner, I skeptically looked at it differently: jobs like that ought not exist because they are dehumanizing and frivolous. These workers are not support staff for the elite, the homeless are not tangible reminders to stay off drugs; such viewpoints are grotesquely self centered but I heard them every day from otherwise smart people. The Poor are cues of social degradation and if you ignore the cues then you're irresponsible, but if you deny the fact they are cues then you are something much worse. And if you actually go out of your way to contradict and scorn someone who advocates social change, who is poor and works with the poor daily, then you are in league with evil. It's an unforgivable reproach.
The Artisan Outlet job was back in the era when Oggy was living purely to explore America and experience what Kerouac had written about...but in the 1990s and without the drugs and alcohol and loose women. I needed a little bit of money for grilled cheese sandwiches and books but otherwise lived a carefree existence revolving around my bicycle and Jean Paul Sartre.
The job isn't much different than any warehouse job I've had, mindless sorting and counting, a byproduct of a capitalist culture of robotic labor allowing for the least amount of reflection and counter-productive revolutionary rebellion. But the culture of defeat in that warehouse was the worst...worse than cotton picking or berry picking or planting trees or baking aluminum heat sinks. We picked hair scrunchies for countless Hot Topic teen slut stores across New England. The variety and design of hair scrunchies would amaze you...and the dedication to counting and bundling these hair scrunchies was something to witness. I was indifferent to our objective because I saw the naked and humiliating uselessness in our endeavor. My job from 7:30 am to 5PM was to walk around this huge concrete room with rows and rows of boxes containing hair scrunchies and fill orders for different stores....but my covert motive was to study the culture and incite rebellion, to crush the overlord, to liberate the be-trodden.
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| Important: If the order calls for 1 checkerboard scrunchie then you pick 1 checkerboard scrunchie. |
As I wandered the aisles looking for a neon pink, silk and cotton blend hair scrunchie, I didn't think about how I alone could escape the drudgery because that kind of selfish and generic thought process would align me with the benumbed cunts whose college degrees were framed with vain insolence and dramatic self aggrandizing for their own egos to shine back in the mirror of their lustful narcissism. No, I then began my planning to free everyone from this kind of ludicrous servitude. Because that's the way I think. I already know that I can improve my own life, I can fuck and have babies and throw them to the wolves of consumerism and merchandized assignment and collateral damage, exploit the young, work the system, pollute the earth, but there must be a way for these kinds of jobs to be forever eliminated from the world. Women in China squat over fires to boil sulfuric acid to dissolve the microchips and gold out of circuit boards from broken Gameboys. Obviously I don't want that job but is it a giant leap to try to make a world where the Chinese woman doesn't do that job either? According to most of the college degree holders I know, yes, it is a giant and hopeless leap.
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| Because your iphone is that important. |
The Breaking Point: I was told that occasionally there were "rush orders" and that when these rush orders arrived I was supposed to leap into action, downshift my gears and actually run from one box to another. I sort of thought they were joking because already the indignity of walking in a leisurely manner from one box of scrunchies to another was more than I could bear, but indeed a rush order was announced and my eyes widened as the other pickers all started to run from one box to another, bumping into one another in a frenzy like ants whose nest has been set on fire. I had a minor mental breakdown as the hopelessness of convincing my fellow laborers of the insanity they were obeying became clear to me. They had been assimilated into the warehouse mentality and the big picture of life and liberty was now completely obscured by corporate authority, the directive to gather hair scrunchies was all consuming. "Tell me about your horses," I asked the lady and she didn't respond as the quest for green striped cotton scrunchies was all demanding. I needed the money but not so bad that I would run to pick up two floral pattern hair scrunchies, like I was in the military. So I dejectedly clocked out and got on my bicycle to ride to the beach and watch the waves crash on the rocks near a jetty. Clouds evaporated on their way toward a lighthouse, seagulls glided in the breeze, mariners tacked toward a faraway island. I didn't eat that day as the final check would not arrive for another week. The temp agency reprimanded me for leaving without permission. The general consensus was that I was unfit to hold down a decent job and had quit a "low paying, but honest" career. I was worthless and pathetic and would be lucky to get a job washing cars. I read my Descartes and Kant treatises but found no protocol for my peril.
